Seattle: A planned alliance of Washington State’s premier two seaports, Seattle and Tacoma, has taken another step toward fruition with Wednesday’s meeting of the ports’ commissioners releasing the draft Northwest Seaport Alliance agreement.
The plan is for the alliance to unify management of the two ports’ marine cargo terminals and related functions. Each will retain its existing port commission governance and asset ownership.
Tacoma and Seattle ports taken together are the third-largest container gateway in North America, supporting more than 48,000 marine cargo jobs.
Port commissioners will hold a public meeting on Friday to discuss the agreement. The two ports expect to submit the final agreement to the Federal Maritime Commission in June, and each port to formalise it by August 1.
The plan outlines that each port needs a “strategic terminal” that can accommodate two of the mega ships that are coming online.
The ports expect to shrink their acreage of international container terminals from 1,080 acres to 850 acres. At the same time they anticipate this optimisation growing their container traffic from 3.5 million teus last year to 6 million by 2025.
